Decolonizing Archival Practice and Diversifying the Historical Record Through Post-Custodial Human Rights Archiving

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Abstract

Over the past twenty years, archival discourse has shifted from embracing objectivity and neutrality as core professional values to rightfully questioning how these values negatively impact archival practice and the historical record. While this turn in archival discourse has compelled archives to expand its collection scope to include materials of and from communities historically marginal to archival endeavors, there are still relatively few examples of archival repositories that actively challenge the physical collection of materials from these groups, an act rooted in neo/colonial history and practice. This talk will address how the implementation of post-custodial archiving within human rights contexts can respond to historical inequities by empowering community ownership of their own archives and collective memory as well as ensuring a robust historical record.